The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Latest editorial
Clause one of the Labour Party constitution dates from 1918. Here’s why it still matters
The words composed by Sidney Webb: ‘To organise and maintain in Parliament and in the country a Political Labour Party’ were a crucial landmark in Labour’s journey to becoming a membership-based electoral presence, writes KEITH FLETT
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
Two months into Donald Trump’s second run as president, what can we glean about his policies towards Latin America so far, asks TIM YOUNG, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Xenophobic hysteria over the statistically insignificant number of small-boat crossings deliberately conceals how capitalism manipulates population flows for profit — if we can explain that, we’ll beat the right, argues NICK WRIGHT
JOGINDER BAINS argues that the infamously cruel and calculated mass murder of Indians blocked into a public square and fired upon by the British Indian Army still faces a reckoning
The annual Fenner Brockway Lecture, hosted by Liberation, was delivered this year by Peter Mertens, Chair of the Workers’ Party of Belgium. STEVE BISHOP reflects on some of the highlights of Mertens’ address
THE Labour Party’s history is not something much discussed at Labour conferences. There are occasional nods to Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson and of course Tony Blair.
The Labour Party constitution, written by Sidney Webb in 1918 and amended since, is usually only discussed when the leadership is trying to work out how to gather more power for itself and less for the unions and ordinary members.
A recent exception was the period from 2010 to 2019 under the leadership of Ed Miliband and then Jeremy Corbyn, when more power was given to members and membership numbers boomed. The current leadership of Sir Keir Starmer owes a good deal to the fact that the Labour right was concerned that the left might gain control of the order of service in Labour’s broad church, as Ralph Miliband put it.
More from this author
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
Similar stories
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson
Normally in British politics, leftwingers defect right. Under Blair and now Starmer however, this trend seems to reverse, calling into question the ‘broad church’ that welcomes Tories and excludes socialists, writes KEITH FLETT